slatternly

"Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Scatcherd said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot BEAR to be subjected to systematic arrangements.

She was a large, stout woman, always dressed slatternly and always tired from the burdens of her flesh, her work, and her husband.

He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year's end to the other.

Micawber came in; a little more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now, to my unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself for company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.

Now, however, we were beginning to come among continuous streets, where laborers and dockmen were already astir, and slatternly women were taking down shutters and brushing door-steps.

A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping up the gap with her figure.

I had, since that time, discovered that her name was Margaret Porcher, and that she was the most awkward, slatternly, and obstinate servant in the house.

A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead and fastened at the back by a broken comb.

As to her being a person of refinement and well dressed, they are, as you perceive, handsomely mounted in solid gold, and it is inconceivable that anyone who wore such glasses could be slatternly in other respects.

He squeezes your bare knee firmly, which now you notice is slung to the side in a slatternly sort of way, which sends you into another paroxysm of laughter.

On Tyneside women: "Slatternly...standing at the doors of wretched little houses gossiping with other slatterns or screeching for their small children playing among the filth".

Other rooms are occupied by drinkers Fan, a slatternly floozie with a heart of gold, played by Catrin Aaron, and Barty, a public school type down on his luck, played by Michael Geary.

Fanny cannot help observing the effects of poverty on youth and beauty: "It often grieved her to the heart--to think of the contrast between them--to think that where nature had made so little difference, circumstances should have made so much, and that her mother, as handsome as Lady Bertram, and some years her junior, should have an appearance so much more worn and faded, so comfortless, so slatternly, so shabby" (408).

The people weren't up to much either: "slatternly" women standing at the doors of "wretched little houses" and Geordie men, "stocky toothless fellows cursing in their uncouth accent".

Officials are corrupt, women slatternly and the power of the law both illogical and unstinting.